Quote[..] beyond the ecological the remaining qualities of cryptoart are deeply worrying.
QuoteCryptoart remakes digital artworks as primarily tokens of monetary worth, content and concept secondary to an asset that has market value.
Cryptoart creates artificial scarcity for digital objects, creating an "original" which can be owned for the purpose of resale.
Digital objects do not currently have a concept of 'ownership which can be resold.' (As far as I'm aware,) There is no actual scarcity being applied to the digital artworks as we know them. There is also beauty to be found in scarcity; I design games, and everything about game design is predicated on artificial barriers. (Though as I read and think more about NFTs I recognize it's something I hate, actually, and have been working against for years, to questionable success. See NO DOORS, where I'll continue to think on this.)
QuoteCryptoart recreates some of the worst aspects of existing art markets, pitting the super-stardom of those who have gotten lucky or who already had money and connections to play with against the realities of countless others who will see no such return.
Existing digital art platforms and communities also have this problem? See: The Indie Bubble.
QuoteCryptoart offers no intellectual property protection and there is no regulatory structure in place to keep copyrighted materials from being minted into and sold as NFTs, with or without the consent of the creator or copyright holder. Once an NFT is minted, there is no way to remove it from the blockchain or secondary market.
Cryptoart smart contracts offer no legal protection, and any talk of contracts baked into the NFT "requiring resales to cut in the artist" or "compensate gallery workers" depend entirely on the goodwill of the purchaser.
Cryptoart lets a few artist early adopters get rich from a system made to reward investors, not artists.
(Regarding the previous two or three quotes: I really don't know much, but isn't the whole thing about cryptoart that artists automatically get a cut, that it's technologically baked-in as much as any of the other problematic stuff? e.g. I thought the smart contract and the artist cut was as true as "there is no way to remove it from the blockchain," by the exact same mechanism. Sucks if not true!)
(I did a bit of research and, no, smart contracts do seem to be automatically enforced and not removable, at least on the (unforgivable, Proof-of-Work) Ethereum blockchain. (Seriously, don't fuckin use Ethereum. At the time of writing this, everything Pipkin says applies 100% to Ethereum and Bitcoin IMO, regardless of all my questioning.))
QuoteI understand first-hand the desperation of trying to live in a world that has systemically undervalued and undercut the arts, and how compelling a vision of escape can be. I truly do want to live to see the world that rewards artists for making the work they would like to make without asking them to jeopardize their health, stability, and creative integrity. This is not just my political belief- it is a desire that would directly benefit me and those I love. It is a future I have to believe in to keep going every day.
I have thoughts about this. I think we need to go beyond "wanting to live to see the world that rewards artists for making the work they would like to make." We need to, first, learn how to make the work we like to make -- that can be a hard, personal battle. And, we need to make an effort to find these world-systems that reward us and the artists we care about for making this work -- as I grow as an artist I've come to believe that in general the work of actually constructing these world-systems is beyond me and most artists I know -- not in a technical skills sense, but in the sense that the mindset necessary for their creation is incompatible with the mindset necessary for creating art.
Governments and economies and massive systems and things like that are not works of art.
Finally, I disagree with the argument put forth that NFTs and cryptoart must be ignored whole-cloth in order to make moves towards this dream future... but I agree with the dream. And I agree with about half of Pipkin's final statement.
QuoteLet this whole horrible chapter of history convince you that money is fake, we can do anything with it we want, and that we do not want cryptoart.
Money is fake.
We can do anything with it we want.
We can do anything with it we want.